


After

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 3.23, 4.01, Angst, F/M, Fic, Grieving, Mid-Season, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 11:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12189477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: 3.23-4.01. Iris aches for an after.  (Barry disappears in the Speed Force, and Iris writes a letter to him.)





	After

_Dear Barry,_

_I had a plan._

_I wasn’t ready – how could anyone be ready to die? – but I thought I knew how it all would end.  I promised myself I wouldn’t try to hold onto you, because I knew you would drown with me before you let go.  I wanted to be brave enough to close my eyes, but instead I looked at you and wanted to live._

_I wanted to live to see your smile on your twenty-ninth birthday.  I wanted to live to hold your hand as summer turned to fall.  I wanted to bury myself in your hugs.  I wanted to walk alongside you on the pier and sit across from you at Jitters and inhabit your spaces at STAR and CCPD and anywhere your footsteps fell.  I wanted to introduce you to my friends as my husband.  I wanted so much more than twenty-eight years, Bartholomew._

_I dream about that night, walking through the alternatives: if I had held onto you, if I had taken your place, if the Speed Force had simply left us alone.  I thought I would spare you from drowning by letting you go.  But the ocean was calling, and you had to go._

_Part of me has to believe that you’ll come home.  You’ll be back before your scent fades from your sweaters, before I forget what your laugh sounds like, before winter steals every drop of warmth from our little world.  You’ll step out from behind the curtain and summer will never end._

_But October is almost here, and I can’t help but think you aren’t coming._

_I want you to be happy, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.  I want you to be happy._

_But I don’t know how to exist here, in limbo, where our realities can’t converge, where I won’t ever know if you’re still alive.  I can’t think of you as dead, because we never buried you._

_I still have your ring.  It’s sitting on a shelf, waiting for you._

_Some part of me knows that I will always wait for you._

_Barry, Barry, Barry, Barry.  I miss saying your name out loud.  My mouth tastes like ash whenever I think about it.  I can look out at the city and pretend that you’re out there, but then I try to say your name, and it’s real:_

_You can’t hear me anymore._

_I don’t know how to grieve for you.  Grief is innate: flowers die, days end, strangers pass away.  Everything happens to something somewhere else.  But then it happens to you, and it’s not grief anymore.  It’s not “I’m sorry for your loss;” “I heard;” “I’m here for you."_

_When something happens – when this unthinkable thing we can’t talk about happens – we want it to happen to the world around us.  I want every blade of grass to know you aren’t there anymore.  I want the fields to change color, from this gorgeous ephemeral now to this halting after-you.  I want them to be beautiful, to make me cry.  The grass was green when you were here, and now everything is violet-blue, and I’m never going to forget how beautiful the Earth was when we looked out across those emerald fields together._

_But the land stays the same – the Earth rises, the sun falls – and it feels emptier now.  My life hasn’t changed; I have.  And I don’t know how to stop seeing it that way._

_I have to wake up every day and decide to live without you.  I watch life carry on, even though it should have stumbled, it should have paused, it should have known that you went missing._

_I can’t not see you.  Everywhere I go, I expect you to be somewhere.  And now you’re one place I can’t reach._

_I keep a vase of roses for you because there’s no other place to lay them.  They’re helping, a little – because they change.  They’re fading, now.  They’ll wilt, soon.  They’ll be empty stalks eventually.  Every shift is subtle but persistent.  The world is changing without you.  And I’m learning to change, too._

_They want me to grieve – Dad, Wally, the rest of the team – but I don’t know how to weep for you.  I don’t know if I’ll ever figure it out.  I don’t know how many years it will take before I stop filling a jar with flowers that fade, and wilt, and die, hoping you’ll come home to see them bloom red again._

_I know how to bury flowers, but I don’t know how to grieve for you._

_My light is fading fast – the sun is setting now.  I’ll be here, in our home, and one day, maybe, in that future I thought I was ready for, you’ll join me.  We’ll make a new plan.  We’ll live a new life.  We’ll be new people, changed by our experiences._

_I ache for an after._

_But know this, Barry West-Allen: you have always had my love._

_And no matter where you go, that will never change._

_Yours,_

_Iris West-Allen._


End file.
